Three Race Cars In My Pocket

From about 1998 through 2010-ish I was a regular racing collector. I continued to pick up the occasional NASCAR blaster for a few more years but I only watch a race or two each season now, so I am no longer an active collector. But because racing sets include some of the coolest relics, I still will pick up a couple of cards a year.  

In last year’s COMC Black Friday order I had three NASCAR cards. A 1998 Upper Deck Road To The Cup- Winning Material Dale Jarrett piston ring/fire suit dual relic. This card was a gift for my son, he is a total gear head and loves the piston ring in a card.

A 2013 Press Pass Redline- Muscle Car Memorabilia Jeff Burton sheet metal relic

A 2009 Wheels Main Event- Stop & Go Pit Sign Scott Speed sign relic. 

It Will Soon Be Time To Restart Those Engines

After a year the question of who will be getting the NASCAR license has been answered and to nobody’s surprise it is Panini. At this point not a lot is known other than they have four sets in this year’s lineup with three of the products being re-hashed from their other licenses

2016 Panini Prizm

2016 Panini Torque

2016 Panini Certified

2016 Panini National Treasure

 

I have not watched NASCAR regularly for 4-6 years but I still have respect for what Press Pass did for so many years and I don’t like this idea. I realize it is all about who is willing to pay the most cash but I would have rather seen the license go back to Upper Deck, who did a solid job for the 6 years they had a NASCAR license.

NASCAR really is a different creature when it comes to cardboard, brands like Prizm and Certified just are not the correct medium for these fans. A card that is complete foil with bad angled designs are not what the license needs. National Treasure should do very well and will replace Press Pass’ Showcase and Five Star as a top end product. As for Torque we will have to wait and see.

 

Review- 2010 Press Pass Main Event

I decided to go a little out of my comfort zone and picked up a blaster of Press Pass 2010 Main Event. I have watched racing in the past but it has been a good 6-8 years since I regularly watched a NASCAR season and I was never a collector of race cards. I have from time to time picked up individual cards that I thought were cool or a pack here or there so this is pretty foreign to me.

Press Pass is the authority when it comes to NASCAR cards and they have been for many years going back well in to the 90s. They were actually the first company to include relics in their cards when the Burning Rubber relic cards were inserted in packs in 1996.

I like Press Pass but I have to say that this set is a bit odd when compared with the cards from another sport because you have cars and drivers that are to be represented in the set so the base set does not have a standard appearance. I actually had mistaken some of the base cards for inserts because they were so different looking. I tried to select a pretty good variety to post up so you can get an idea of what comes in the packs.

First up are the base cards. This was a 100 card base set with cards 90-100 being Short Prints. Starting with drivers I pulled some of the regulars like Ken Harvick, Mark Martin, Robby Gordon and Kurt Busch. The car base cards include one of my favorites, Jeff Gordon along with Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth.

The inserts I pulled are a Brian Vickers Tale of the Tape and a Kurt Busch American Muscle. These cards have a holofoil reflective surface to them so I knew they were not part of the base set even before I checked the card numbers.

Each pack also included a Fight Card mini card; there were 7 packs in the blaster so I got 7 minis. Oddly my cards were sequential in numbering. There are 25 Fight Card minis and I got cards 17-23 on the checklist.

I was hoping to find a cool memorabilia card and they are a reasonable 1:96 packs, but I had no luck. I love the Press Pass Five Star release but I am not a NASCAR collector and I don’t see myself buying any more packs in the near future.

Press Pass Five Star, Expensive But Well Worth It!

Press Pass, a card designer that at one time produced NCAA cards has turned their full attention to NASCAR collectors. NASCAR cards have been attempted by most of the major card designers including Donurss, Upper Deck and Fleer with limited success but Press Pass has been able to succeed with racing for almost 20 years along with producing die case miniatures.

This is the company that introduced relics in to cards with their 1996 Burning Rubber inserts that contained an actual race-used tire piece. Later that year they started to include pieces of fire suits and sheet metal in some of their inserts and the relic age was born.

With the recently released Press Pass Five Star set you can pull a redemption card, not any redemption card though. These redemption cards are instant win cards for complete items like a 1993 Winston Cup Dale Earnhardt race-used/autographed helmet or you can pull a card for a 1999 Tony Stewart Home Depot fire suit. No longer will your redemption be for a dime-sized fire suit relic but for the entire fire suit. How cool is that?

Each $500 box of Press Pass Five Star contains two packs, one pack has 4 cards and the second pack has a single booklet card. Within each box you will pull:

-A base card #/35 or less

-A dual/triple/quad or over sized memorabilia card #/25 or less

-An autograph from an elite driver #/25 or less

-An autographed memorabilia card #/50 or less

-One Classic Compilations Book Card

The checklist is pretty strong too with early NASCAR racers along side the giants of today and even some of the up and comers. The checklist includes Earnhardt, Jr, Richard Petty, Gordon, Stewart, Danica Patrick and of course Double J Jimmie Johnson.

A quick look at eBay and the base cards along with some of the more basic relic cards can be had for a few dollars but the Prime Autograph patches and some of the booklet cards are already topping $100 with time left in the auction. It looks like this might actually be one of those high dollar sets where you can actually get a decent return on the box.

 On an interesting note Press Pass employees wore white cotton gloves when they packed out each box, which are made from real Chestnut wood, to ensure that you received a box in pristine condition sans fingerprints. The cards are 120 pt stock or higher and every autograph is hard signed on the card.

Thank you Press Pass for an amazing release. Other card designers need to take note because this is how you do a high end set.